IF THE GOOD LORD HAD NOT WANTED THEM SHEARED...:

One of the things that separated Donald Trump from his primary competitors -- and the rest of the Republican Party in general -- was his left-leaning stance on social insurance. Tossing aside a whole generation of conservative agitprop about the "unsustainability" of these programs, he said he would preserve Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid during the campaign.

But Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is a hardcore true believer in movement conservatism, which has been champing at the bit to slash these programs basically since the moment they were implemented. This is an unprecedented opportunity to do so, and it looks like Ryan is going to seize it -- and Trump might even go along with it. The people who voted for Trump because he seemed to be a route towards material security for the lower and middle classes got conned.

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